Japan’s Studio Ghibli announces that it will not release any trailer or promotional materials prior to the release of Hayao Miyazaki’s final film How Do You Live?
The upcoming film, which opens in Japan on July 14, is easily the most anticipated film to hit Japanese theaters in years – and very little is known about it (US and international release dates for the film are yet to be announced not fixed). Ghibli previously described the film as “a grand fantasy” loosely based on Japanese author Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 novel How Do You Live?, a coming-of-age tale of emotional and philosophical development of a little boy after the death of his father. And the studio released an obscure poster for the film in December (see below), but nothing has been said about the film since then — no synopsis of the plot, no voice cast, nothing about the film’s setting or characters. In an interview with Japanese magazine Bungei Shunji on Friday, Toshio Suzuki, Ghibli’s longtime lead producer and considered Miyazaki’s right-hand man, said he would say nothing more about the film before it hits theaters.
Explaining the lack of a label for the upcoming film, which has already been noticed in Japan, Suzuki said: “As part of the company’s operations over the years, Ghibli has wanted to get people to see the films we make. So we thought about it and did a lot of different things to that end — but this time we were like, ‘Eh, we don’t have to do that.’”
He added: “If you keep doing the same thing you’ve done before, you get tired of it. So we wanted to do something different.”
Fans of the legendary anime house, which has long prioritized the pure experience of its works over commercial considerations, will recognize the decision as a very Studio Ghibli-esque move. For years, Ghibli restricted the amount of merchandise that could be licensed and made from its characters for fear they would be overexposed and lose some of their magic. And when the company opened its first long-standing theme park last year, it restricted expanded media access to the park, fearing that widespread media coverage would overpopulate the attraction, undermining the gentle appreciation of nature it contributes to should generate the visitors .
In the interview, Suzuki also contrasted Ghibli’s approach to “How Do You Live?”. with the usual Hollywood marketing methods.
“There’s an American film – oh, I almost said the title out loud! – coming out around the same time this summer [as How Do You Live?],” he said. “They made three trailers for it and released them one by one. If you see all three, you know everything that’s going to happen in this movie. How do moviegoers feel about it? There have to be people who, after watching all the trailers didn’t really want to see the movie, so I wanted to do the opposite of that.”
Suzuki also revealed that it was a compliment from Miyazaki on the first poster that ultimately convinced him to take such a bold, simple approach in releasing the film.
He explained, “I’ve been involved in our films since Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), but this was the first time Hayao Miyazaki really praised me. “Suzuki-san, this is amazing. “This is the best poster you’ve ever made,” he said. I felt like that was a clue, so I decided, “Let’s just use this one poster for marketing.” So no trailers or TV commercials at all… No newspaper ads either. Deep down, I believe that’s what moviegoers latently desire.”
Studio Ghibli’s only poster for How Do You Live? is below.
